sign in sign up
<<
Home , Antz, Chicken Run, Morph (animation), Nick Park, The Wrong Trousers, Wallace and Gromit

Sound For

Chicken Run ruffled some feathers in the cinema, while now the DVD is worth a sticky-beak. Julian Mitchell talked to the sound team behind this egg-straordinary claymation feature.

f you are a fan of Aardman ’s short films you will know that they are masterpieces of their type. However, traditionally an Aardman film was always a as opposed to feature length. But that all changed with Chicken Run, a 79-minute feature film which took four years to bring to celluloid. One of the reasons for the jump to thIe film format was a five-film deal with DreamWorks, the newest Hollywood major headed by the powerful threesome of Jeffrey Katzenburg, , and . The deal gave the team real financial security. In fact, the two sets that were used for shorts like quickly grew into the 30 sets that littered outbuildings around Aardman’s - based studios in ’s west. Chicken Run was the first of these five films and so became highly signif- icant – not just as cement for this new Anglo-America relationship, but also as a test for this type of animation, which takes huge commitment and patience, not to mention time. The hype in Hollywood for this film was enormous – DreamWorks even took the unprecedented step of hijacking the traditional Disney Summer release date of June 23 to show the depth of their backing. Not bad for a studio that started out with a children’s show plastacine character called ... I think anyone over the age of 25 remembers Morph!

Vocal Beginnings The production of an animated film is always an upside-down event because of the length of time it takes to animate. Aardman was pushing out about a minute of film per week, at the peak of Chicken Run’s production. But before one piece of plastecine was bent into action the animators needed a lead from the audio department. James Mather, the only Aardman employee on the audio post- production team, described the start of such a process: “The first thing we did was to assemble and have a ‘scratch’ recording session around a couple of microphones. We needed to get a feeling for the script, to make sure the dialogue worked. We found that there were certain jokes that didn’t work and jokes that were so close to others that they ruined them. Also, some characters became overbearing when they weren’t supposed to be; bit parts in some cases had lead part values. The next three months were spent re-writing different character’s lines or debating whether a character should be there at all.” It was at this stage that Aardman had help from DreamWorks with the script, to ‘finesse it’, as they say in Tinseltown. This scratch recording was then slowly joined by an animated storyboard, which is basically a collec- tion of frames from the drawn storyboard. These frames were then loaded into an Avid, cut and sync’ed to the audio. “This is, I think, an American system called a story-reel where they cut together all the black and white storyboard pictures and edit it as they would edit the film. Even though they don’t move, it’s then called an animatic. So you’ve got the whole story in black and white stills at a pace

42 that they hope will be representative. To make that work enhance the flow and then the sound team has to find a we had to tracklay footsteps, tracklay whoosh-bangs, sound for them. There were occasions when maybe there tracklay music, anything that we could do sound-wise to was a crowd scene and the dialogue editor would notice get that flow going. You could tell pretty much from that a chicken at the back move its mouth as if to say where there were lulls, where there would be an edit something, because the animator felt that the moment problem. For instance, there’s a big chase scene in the warranted it. There were other times when a chicken film that in storyreel version was about eight minutes might be spotted just banging his head against a wall long, we cut that down to four minutes because we knew and, again, a sound had to match it. we couldn’t sustain it no matter how many effects and “The animators are very aware of the sounds they want. music cues you put in. So from the first story-reel If they’re animating day-in and day-out, in their mind they assembly we started putting sound effects on. are running through an idea of what they want it to sound “By that point they are getting a general feel of pace like. It was odd that in some cases the Foleys we put on and how the shots are working. You have to understand matched the pace of the animation when it came in that the decisions made here are of vital importance, because we both understood the pace of the scene. You because every minute that you keep in is a week’s work. have to build up a relationship with the animators so they From that point there is a lull while the storyboard takes are comfortable animating and know you will understand shape, and then we start recording the key characters what they mean and use the right sound.” properly so that they can ‘dope sheet’ – that’s where they That relationship was stretched even further on mark out the frames against the dialogue so they can Chicken Run because the directors, and Peter start animating.” Lord, were still on the picture when the pre-mixing had The voiceovers kept coming back for recording, mainly finished. The final mixing started when they turned up. because of this dope-sheeting process, which is so So unfortunately, the mixing did take longer than usual essential to the animation. You can’t dope sheet to a because they were hearing some of the mixes for the scratch because the lead would then have to do a first time actually on the dubbing stage. kind of ADR to the clay animation, which wouldn’t work, mainly because the animators take so much of their Fowl Sounds characterisation from the character of the voice. The The sound design for an animated feature is more leads will also come back several times throughout the important than for a standard film because it helps the animating as new pick-up lines are introduced. viewers suspend their disbelief, and certain sounds The physical recording of some of the voices was far become associated with certain characters. The sound from ideal: and only ever met effects quotient for these films is incredibly high, as is the once to record together and that was in Canada where effects mix on the dubbing stage. For films like Chicken Mel was filming. All the other takes with Mel were wild Run the danger for the sound designer is to make the tracks, either in a Californian studio or down an ISDN effects too comical or too unbelievable; playing it straight line from London or Bristol. has already reaped Aardman many rewards. Adrian Rhodes, a director of De Lane Lea in London Do Chickens Have Lips? where most of the sound work was done, was sound The shorts are known for their lack designer and dubbing mixer on Nick Park’s previous of dialogue and heavy use of sound effects to bring the Wallace and Gromit films, but for Chicken Run he did the animation alive. Chicken Run needed the same injection final mix only. His choice for sound designer was of effects but also had reams of dialogue to contend Graham Headicar, winner of the UK’s BAFTA award for with. James, who started acting as the main dialogue sound for the last three years. Graham is also part-owner editor when the animation started coming back, was of De Lane Lea after setting up a sound company called initially concerned that there was too much dialogue: “I was worried that it might be overkill, but it actually worked. You don’t feel overawed by it. We re-recorded all the background chickens and they filled out and gave the track size. All the character dialogue after that seemed to be right. You don’t feel that there is too much, even though there are hundreds of chickens here, not just the eight that you are following.” James was actually editing the whole track – the dialogue, music, and effects – while the story reel was taking place, with the help of some freelance editors. When the animation started coming back the jobs were split off because of the intensity of the work. Also, when the animation started coming back they would notice that there was animation without any allocated sound. Apparently this is the way of animators: they will insert bits of action that they feel The Chicken Run sound team at De Lane Lea Studios, London. 43 guttural sounds, like some kind of devil dog. I was really geeing it up when the bloke said he would let it out. So there I was with a 30-foot boom, recording this dog on the other end. He did actually get the mic a couple of times. The dogs that you hear in the film are actually those dogs and they aren’t pitched down or anything to sound more vicious. That is them.”

Chicken Pie Machine Aardman films do bear repeat viewing because of all the subtleties entwined in the mix. Again, the sound effects play a large part in this, and Graham was able to layer many tracks of sound to achieve the effects needed for the action. One such effect was the sound of the main gate and the perimeter fence to the farm: “This gate is such an important aspect. In the opening sequence the gate is con- stantly being shut so that was layered with 10 or 11 tracks, just to make the gate live. Also, the sense of the fence just moving in the wind was important. The rattling had to be just right to convey the mood. “We had quite a good schedule on the film which gave us time to really concentrate on things and we did produce a lot of sounds. Nine times out of 10 most of those sounds were used in the final mix; if I’d layed 10 tracks then all 10 tracks were used. There were times when I just wanted to Boom with fellow sound man Paul Hamblin: “I hadn’t mix down things, but then I thought there would be done an animation film before, even though I had done no point, because when I lay my tracks I balance every- features. I talked to Adrian about it to try and get some thing out in the machine – so when I’m tracklaying, the ideas from him of what was expected. The key for this faders more or less stay level. Adrian can then have the film was to go for realism. The thing I found difficult was faders level and, again, nine times out of 10 he doesn’t the aspect. There’s a fine line with the Aardman have to play with them too much.” stuff. Sometimes if you add comedy noises it doesn’t If you are a fan of Nick Park’s work you will have become believable. There are only certain areas where noticed that he likes to include some kind of machine in you can put a twang or a boing, so all the stuff has been his stories: the NASA ‘techno’ trousers in The Wrong played straight, to a certain extent, with the odd funny Trousers, and Preston’s Knit-O-Matic machine in A Close noise here and there. Shave. Similarly, Chicken Run has a pie-making machine. “At the start of the project, myself and an assistant “There’s this whole chicken pie-making machine which spent a week on a place called the Prop Farm and we Rocky and Ginger end up trying to sabotage. I was asked just recorded everything that made a noise – gates, to do the sound of the machine in lots of different ways, doors, animals, and so on. There is a sequence in the but to an extent I listen to requests but will also end up film where dogs bite a gnome, so we put together sounds doing what I think is right. The initial brief I had was that of a dog chewing an apple, and eating crunchy dog food it was a diesel kind of sound, but Nick likes steam with and layered it up from that. From this exercise we got all cogs and pistons. There are also pastry cutters, conveyor the squeaks and the fences, bumps and bangs. We also belts and a big gravy dispenser that squirts out gravy. recorded a lot of dogs there. Some of it was useful. but There’s also a big oven that makes great use of Dolby the dogs on the farm weren’t vicious enough. For a dog Digital – when the flames light up they go all the way to be really vicious it has to be basically bad. We hadn’t around the surround. got what we needed animal-wise, and we were getting “Originally it was thought that the machine wouldn’t quite worried about this when Ted Swanscott, who has have any music but would have its own energy. I always done most of the Foley for Chicken Run, mentioned that knew that that wasn’t going to work because you need his son was a security guard who had some really bad the music to drive it. I created so much for this dogs that aren’t let out in public. We went to this industri- machine but you will never hear probably 50 percent of al estate and met his dogs – a pretty hairy moment. I it. There are about 40 or 50 various noises and a lot of started recording while the dogs were still in their cage. I it is vocal, I just went into a studio and made lots of started eye-balling this one dog to get it going and it ridiculous vocal noises, which gives it some kind of suddenly turned to me and produced these tremendous organic quality.”

44 Cluck Track The pre-mixes started at De Lane Lea. Dialogue premixes were taking about a day-and-a-half to mix a reel and probably two days for each reel of both Foleys and effects. The score was being recorded and pre- mixed at Abbey Road and, again, there was a definite American influence with the composers from the DreamWorks stable, who had previously worked on films like and Enemy of the State. Having such a dynamic American-feeling score did concern the sound team a little bit because they thought that Jeffrey Katzenburg, who was acting as Executive Producer, would tone down the effects and turn up the music. They needn’t have worried because he asked them for more AW4416 and the full range of Yama- effects when he flew over for a run-through. ha Digital Products are As mentioned before, final mixing did run available at these Premium “There’s something late because the directors didn’t come off the Yamaha Dealers film until the start of final mixing in Studio One about animation that of De Lane Lea – so there was some changing of premixes to be done. Adrian Rhodes had the ACT gives you much more job of mixing and, as the editor and sound precision control designer of all three Wallace and Gromit films, Pro Audio 02 6249 7766 and was probably the only man for the job: “The Better Music 02 6282 3199 style of animation was fundamentally the same over the placement of for Chicken Run, but there was a lot more and the dialogue – main dialogue plus a flock of NSW sound way chickens that supported this dialogue in the Sound on Stage 02 9281 0077 background. The sound effects were sitting things move.” back a bit and we also had a lot more music, Sound Devices 02 9283 2077 which was very different from the previous Turramurra 02 9449 8487 films but helped to point out the humour. Hutchings 02 9387 5011 “The mix was quite difficult because we ended up with a very com- pressed schedule, as the directors were still shooting while we were pre- dubbing, so we had to guess what they would want. Consequently we VIC put a lot of stuff in there and left it very open, so when final mixing we Soundcorp 03 9488 1555 had everything available. Inevitably, by then, it had become more of a thinning-out process. Warehouse Sound 03 9417 4866 “The pre-mix was therefore very wide. Sometimes we would even Manny’s Fitzroy 03 9416 1564 think not to premix and leave it all live on the faders. But given we were up against picture that wasn’t locked and new versions were coming in Manny’s Prahran 03 9529 7241 from the studio, if we hadn’t premixed it we would have had to cut automation files, that kind of thing. So it was easier to record it onto SA something then conform that, so we could keep up with the ever- changing picture.” Derringers 08 8371 1884 Even though Adrian was working with 210 faders on the mix it was mostly under control on the studio’s Harrison Series 12: “We’ve got four WA effects pre-mixes, two background premixes, three Foley premixes and Music Park 08 9470 1020 two dialogue premixes and they were all eight wide. Also, we’re doing this in Dolby EX, so if I had a sound that’s panned around the room that’s seven tracks worth, two panned sounds means that instantly I’ve QLD lost 14 tracks just for two sounds. Musiclab 07 3252 2188 “Most of the time we put atmos in the surround channels and let the music bleed through so there was a whole feeling of wrap-around. Brisbane Sound 07 3257 1040 There’s something about animation that gives you much more precision Buzz Music Cairns 07 4051 9666 and control over the placement of sound and the way things move. Espe- cially in Nick and Pete’s films, because things will fly across and out of the screen. I don’t normally pan dialogue, but in an animation you can, because you’ve got such control of the voice by itself, the feet by them- selves, the hands by themselves. You can pan everything precisely. “Detail is everything, and there’s such a high level of detail. These guys made this film frame-by-frame and they’re not going to let it stop at the end of the shoot. They want the same detail from the sound, and Yamaha Music Australia that’s what we had to achieve.” PO Box 268 South Melbourne Vic 3205 AT Toll Free: 1800 331 130 or visit us at www.yamaha.co.jp/product/proaudio 46 Email: [email protected] ABN 84 004 259 527